Welcome to a new column style I am incorpirating called Insert Coin. The primary focus of these posts will be on the video game arcades of yesterday, with a focus on classics and the obscure. To kick off Insert Coin, I will start with one of my favorites, and an all time classic: Galaga.
Galaga is one of many space age shooters from the 80’s. It’s brethern include Space Invaders, Galaxian, and Centepide. Each stage was littered with 40 enemies of three different types, a red enemy, a yellow enemy and a blue enemy. While the red and yellow only required one bullet to destroy, the blue enemies took two shots. In later levels, the enemies shift into various forms that are worth differnt point values.
Challenge stages took place every three levels. In these levels enemies never lined up, only dancing around the screen to see how many you could eliminate. This was also a prime chance to earn extra lives, as your ship was elminated in only one simple shot, or collision.
This game has been released many times in recent years, with each version trying to stay true to the orginal, although very few succeed. People complain about how fast buttons respond to how lives aren’t cherished as much as they were in the original arcade version.
IMAGE SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Galaga.png
